Intro to Blogging

My neighbor is screaming at his wife. I'm woken up by the sounds of his wailing through the now apparently thin walls of my condo. It's Saturday morning, around 11:30am, and I'm trying to at least make it to noon in bed. My neighbor is not helping. I'm trying to block it out, yet I'm pulled in, trying to make out exactly what he's yelling about. It's muffled... kind of like Charlie Brown's teacher. What should I do if it gets heated? Do I have a responsibility to call the police? I'm the only one attached to them. It's a twin condo, so it's either me, or no one. That's a lot of responsibility that I did not sign up for. This is certainly not part of my association fee I pay every month.

“Aww, look at you crying! Ya gonna cry some more? Huh? HUH?”

Shit. This is getting bad. Ok, if I hear one more thing, I have to do something. Maybe bang on the wall? 911 is the nuclear button. They’ll KNOW I called. Hugh does seem like the hothead type, but I didn’t think he’d go getting into domestic disputes with his wife, Barb, on this level. I wonder if they can hear me when I’m puttering around the house? Now, I’m not causing anything close to a ruckus in my bedroom. Maybe snoring. No one has stayed the night (yet...), and throughout the rest of the house, I keep it fairly quiet, unless I’m blasting iTunes while I make dinner. Funny how there's damn near a crime on my hands, and I'm thinking about ME being a bad neighbor. I must have some serious guilt issues. I think that second "HUH" is leading me to believe this is on the brink of disaster. You get into a heated argument, and you want some answers. You yell, scream, and then you say something like, "Well, what do you have to say for yourself, huh? HUH?" The second "HUH" really means you're pissed. You're begging to hear something back, maybe as a launching pad for more vitriol, maybe to actually hear answers, or maybe you're just so frustrated that second “HUH” came spilling out. I don't know. At this point, I don't care. I do know I haven't heard one peep out of Barb yet. He's certainly not yelling at their dog, there would have been barking by now.

I go into the bathroom to find out if I can hear better. Besides the walls being thin enough to hear your neighbors screaming, a quirk/flaw of the house is that the bathroom is LESS soundproofed than the bedroom and the rest of the house. How is that possible? Wouldn't you want that to be more soundproofed? There's some foul sounds coming out of bathrooms in general. To date, I've heard some murmurs and some coughing and sneezing. But this is when I'm on the throne. You have to have the planets align just so in a case where me and Hugh have just a thin piece of sheetrock separating us from our own personal sheeting. God help me if I hear them fucking in the shower. I don't think I've ever laughed jerking off, so that would be a first.

The yelling dies down. It felt like an eternity, but really, we’re talking three to four minutes. Now silence. Maybe I can go back to sleep. Maybe State College's finest won't be called over for a dispute that will surely hit the police report (and therefore my news guy’s desk at the radio station, and therefore on my desk, since it's on my block). I get back in bed and pull the covers over me. I know I'm not going to completely fall back asleep, so now I'm just staying warm and closing my eyes. Disaster averted, confrontation avoided. Then I hear in a muffled voice...

“Are you fucking kidding me? Foul? A fucking foul?”

Foul? Is he watching basketball? At this hour? Is a game even on? Is he watching a tape? Son of a bitch. He's yelling at the TV. He was yelling at the TV the whole time. I don't know whether to be relieved or be angry. Not angry because I felt duped into thinking he was beating the crap out of his wife, angry because my slumber was woken up because he was yelling at an inanimate object! I can understand if you'e playing music. I do that a lot, and it's almost noon. But yelling at the TV? They can't hear you! I never understood why anybody yells at the TV. I'm not counting reacting in a burst of anger or joy. I'm talking about having a conversation as if the people in the picture tube could hear you. In this case, the people in the picture tube would be hard of hearing, since my neighbor is screaming at them. This extends to chastising the contestants during "Wheel of Fortune" to yelling at the movie screen during a horror flick. I don't get it. You're better off expressing your thoughts and emotions to an anonymous group on some site. Like I'm doing now. In blog form.

I didn’t really want to blog. I don’t think I have anything to say. Shit, my job is to talk to people over the air, but that’s restrictive. It follows a format, I have to promote things, and I really can’t say what’s on my mind. The cursing is a problem. I love to fucking curse. Can’t do it on the air. So, I started podcasting for the station. A better medium, I can curse, I have as much time as I want to bitch about whatever. Now there’s new restrictions I was not anticipating. I’m trying to appeal to my radio audience still (the podcast is on the station site), so I can't hit on a few topics so I don't rankle people the wrong way (i.e. religion, politics), and the cursing is only limited to what "NYPD Blue" got away with back in the day. Some of these rules were self-imposed for the greater good of attracting more people to listen. Cursing in excess would turn some people off. And I have to have something to say each week. Want to build an audience? Regular updates, topics people give a shit about, and for God's sake don't be boring! Throw in some guests, maybe take the time to edit out the dull parts, etc., etc. Do that, while doing your eighteen other jobs and responsibilities at the radio station. For free. I still do the podcasts, after a year of making them, because it's fun and I enjoy it, so it's not a burden. But that's all "Tony" time. That's radio boy. "Tony" and "Tom" are slightly different. Not much separation in personality. I'm only "Tony" because my first boss didn't like "Tom" or "Tommy" as a radio name. I didn't give a shit, I just wanted to be on the air. But there is a separation nevertheless, "Tony" and "Tom" are two different, however slight, personalities. So now I turn to blogging as an outlet... for Tom(my).

I was encouraged to start blogging after another one of my lengthy emails I spout out every so often about a weekend in question, for instance. I write and write and write and send it off to a couple friends. Aside from the obscene length of the emails, they are generally well received. "You should write a blog. You have a good voice," a friend wrote back to me. I don’t even know what that means. Sure... why not? It seems easy enough. But the idea of blogging just seems so pretentious and self-serving. "Look at me! Give me attention!" I'm guilty of that behavior from time to time, so I try to keep it to a minimum. I like the attention of cracking wise in a group setting and getting some laughs. That, I'm guilty of big time. But I'm not going on and on about some mundane topic pretending it's something you might give a shit about. I know not everybody’s blog is like. I’m just perpetuating the stereotype. Twitter has the same rap, which is true if you’re a celebrity. They’re supposed to be self-involved and we are the ones who follow their every move. If we didn’t, People magazine wouldn’t be on the shelves (Celebrities... they’re just like us!). Some of the blogs I follow though aren't like that. I do follow a humor blog, Pointless Banter, at least the Bobby Finstock entries. The others are friends. Omaha Dad, A Beautiful Mindgush, and my friend Bryan's blog. That's it (if you want to be added, do let me know, i’ll check you out). The more I think of it, maybe I’m just being a holier-than-thou prick. It shouldn't be a crime to want to write about stuff and have people enjoy it. Look at all the books you have. There ya go. Were they all driven by ego? Possibly. But you own them, read them, enjoy them. This shouldn't be any different. Is it so wrong to say "I" once in a while? It's one thing to be self-centered and think about no one but yourself. You constantly steer the conversation back to yourself so you can talk about yourself. That's annoying. I just want to tell a story. People told me I should give it a shot. I got some time to bang out a story every week or so. I heard the same thing about radio. "You have a pretty good voice for radio!" So, I'm in radio. I guess I’m easily open to suggestion. See? I've bullshitted myself into blog writing!

Crap. I just realized I have to promote this thing. And come up with a title. There should be a title to this now, but as I’m typing this, I need a title. A fancy title, a good title. Something that says “obscure reference” with “too intelligent for his own good” with a side of “I get it!”. I will not call it “Screech’s Secret Sauce.” Too easy. Or, “Going with the Vein, and Other Cries for Help”. Too emo. I’ll think of something Billy Joel (Hey, finally! A reference!) related that will surely make you roll your eyes, or something that requires an explanation (“Why did you call it ‘Picasso’s Wet Dream’?”). If you stumbled upon this at random, good for you. If you're reading this because I posted this on facebook or twitter, then that was me self-promoting. That's the catch-22. I don't want to be a shameless self-promoter, but for anyone to read this blog, it's what I have to do. Call up Al Harrington and get me one of those wacky arm guy things. In the future, please ignore the typos and the insecurity.